The text promulgated under the name of John XXIII and titled De Diego Suarez — Tananarivensis (Ambatondrazakaënsis) formally erects a new territorial diocese in Madagascar (Ambatondrazaka), carved out from the territories of Diego Suarez and Tananarive, entrusting it to clergy of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity, defining its cathedral, its suffraganeus dependence on Tananarive, its seminary, chapter (or diocesan consultors), revenues, curial order, and delegating the execution to Marcel Lefebvre as Apostolic Delegate.
Behind this apparently administrative act stands the juridical and theological program of the conciliar revolution: the usurper consolidates a counterfeit hierarchy and structures which, retaining Catholic forms and language, prepare the systematic substitution of the true Church by the conciliar sect.
The Madagascar Blueprint of the Counterfeit Hierarchy
Factual Exposure: Institutionalising an Illicit Succession
At the factual level, this so‑called apostolic constitution appears, at first glance, to be a routine pre‑conciliar act: a new diocese for a growing mission field, with proper boundaries, a cathedral, a bishop’s see, a mandate for a seminary and chapter, and financial provisions. The text:
– States that from the dioceses of Diego Suarez and Tananarive certain territories are detached to form a new diocese Ambatondrazaka.
– Establishes Ambatondrazaka as diocesan seat; elevates the church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus there to cathedral rank.
– Subordinates the new diocese as suffragan to the metropolitan see of Tananarive.
– Orders the erection of at least a minor seminary and a future cathedral chapter (or, temporarily, diocesan consultors).
– Regulates the bishop’s sustenance (division of goods per canon 1500 CIC 1917, offerings of the faithful, curial income, help from Propaganda Fide).
– Entrusts execution to Marcel Lefebvre, then Apostolic Delegate in French Africa.
– Affirms that all contrary dispositions are abrogated; anyone resisting these provisions incurs canonical penalties for disobeying papal decrees.
All of this mimics the juridical and pastoral language of the Catholic Church, but in 1959 it is already wielded by a man whose election, doctrine, and subsequent deeds stand under grave objective suspicion when judged solely by the unchanging norms of the pre‑1958 Magisterium. The essential problem is not the abstract liceity of erecting a diocese, but the subject and the ecclesial organism performing the act.
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, three key factual points emerge:
1. The act presupposes as unquestioned the legitimacy of John XXIII and the conciliar structures he was already preparing. Yet according to the constant doctrine summarized by St. Robert Bellarmine and classical canonists, a manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church nor source of jurisdiction: non potest esse caput, qui non est membrum (he who is not a member cannot be head). When a claimant openly favors condemned errors—collegiality tendencies, ecumenical relativism, modernist sympathies—his “juridical” acts are at least dubius; if he was never a true pope, they are null.
2. The erection of new dioceses under a doubtful or heretical head does not neutrally “help the missions”; it proliferates a counterfeit hierarchy, which later becomes the transmission belt of Vatican II, of the new pseudo‑sacraments, and of religious liberty and ecumenism condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus and by Pius XI in Quas Primas.
3. The prominent executive role given to Marcel Lefebvre—later architect of an inconsistent resistance that continued to acknowledge conciliar usurpers—manifests the internal contradiction: men formed in traditional theology but obedient to a modernist line, used to erect frameworks that the conciliar sect would weaponize against the true faith.
Thus, what is presented as pastoral expansion is in reality an institutional deepening of the future conciliar network in Africa.
Language of Continuity Masking a Program of Subversion
The rhetoric is deliberately pious and “high,” even seemingly Thomistic:
– The Church is styled as a “sublime and fruitful tree… into which all peoples must flow as into a harbor of salvation and tranquility.”
– Reference is made to the parable of the mustard seed (Mt 13:31‑32), as if to say: our expansion in Madagascar is the natural growth of the Kingdom.
Yet, precisely here, the deception appears.
1. The vocabulary exalts universality, growth, shelter, and fruits, but passes over the precise Catholic mark: submission of nations to Christ the King and to the one true religion as the only path to salvation. Pius XI in Quas Primas solemnly taught that peace and order require the public reign of Christ and the recognition of the Catholic Church as His one Kingdom on earth. This document speaks of territorial administration, not of the duty of civil society in Madagascar to acknowledge Christ’s Kingship and reject paganism and false cults.
2. The language is bureaucratically canonical: territorial detachment, suffraganeity, mensa episcopalis, curial acts, canonical penalties. Such “legalism” creates the impression of strict continuity with the 1917 Code and pre‑conciliar practice, while silently preparing the stage on which, a few years later, the same juridical apparatus will be invoked to impose Vatican II’s modernist decrees and the new rites of Paul VI.
3. No word appears about:
– The danger of modern errors already condemned by Pius IX and St. Pius X.
– The infiltration of secret societies which Pius IX denounced as the “synagogue of Satan” directing the war on the Church.
– The doctrinal formation required to shield local clergy and faithful from rationalism, indifferentism, and the evolving “religious liberty” ideology.
Silence here is not a neutral omission; it is the technique of the revolution. The tone is serene, administrative, “optimistic,” free of the combativeness of Pascendi or Lamentabili sane exitu. Such serenity, in the face of the most insidious doctrinal war, is already complicity.
The language thus functions as anesthetic: an elegant canonical wrapper for the implantation of a hierarchy that will, within a decade, be re‑educated by the conciliar sect.
Theological Inversion: Jurisdiction Severed from the True Faith
The deepest issue is theological: can a structure that departs from the integral Catholic faith claim divine authority to erect dioceses and impose canonical penalties?
Pre‑1958 doctrine is unequivocal:
– The Church is a perfect society, possessing from Christ the jus nativum (innate right) to govern, teach, and sanctify (Pius IX, Syllabus, prop. 19 condemned).
– Her laws bind because they come from legitimate pastors in communion with the Roman Pontiff, who, as a Catholic and non‑heretical head, is the principle of unity and jurisdiction.
– A public, manifest heretic is outside the Church and ipso facto loses any jurisdiction (Bellarmine, classical theologians; see also the theological line confirmed by canon 188.4 CIC 1917 on public defection).
This document threatens canonical punishments against those who would “despise” or “reject” its decrees. Yet:
– If John XXIII was at least a public favorer of tendencies condemned by Pius X—historical relativism in doctrine, benevolence to modernist theologians, ecumenical gestures conflicting with the exclusivity of the true Church—then his authority is gravely doubtful according to the very principles of Bellarmine and the traditional canonists themselves.
– A doubtful lawgiver cannot impose certain canonical obligation; lex dubia non obligat (a doubtful law does not bind).
– The clandestine theological program culminating in Vatican II makes clear ex post what the integral Catholic must read ex ante: the one who launches the council of aggiornamento and religious liberty cannot at the same time be the trustworthy guardian of the depositum fidei.
Furthermore, look at the inner logic of the text:
– The new bishop is bound in suffraganeus obedience to Tananarive—an episcopate destined, within a few years, to embrace religious liberty and false ecumenism.
– Evangelization is treated almost exclusively as institutional expansion: diocesan lines, seminaries, chapters, economic structures. In the constant magisterium, missions are above all ordered to bring souls from darkness of false religions into the one Ark of salvation, explicitly rejecting error. Here, no such militant clarity appears.
– The Trinitarians (Order of the Most Holy Trinity) are entrusted with the new diocese. Historically, this order was founded for ransoming captives from infidels. Now their name crowns a structure that will soon be integrated into the conciliar religion of dialogue with false cults; the symbolism is chilling.
Thus, the constitution attributes divine weight to an act which, severed from the integrity of the Roman Pontificate and of doctrine, is emptied of supernatural authority and becomes an element of a parallel, usurping hierarchy.
Silence on Supernatural Ends: The Most Eloquent Indictment
The gravest accusation is what the text does not say.
An apostolic constitution erecting a diocese is not bound to be a treatise in theology; yet, when read against the backdrop of 20th‑century war on the faith, its omissions are devastating:
– No mention of the necessity of being in the state of grace, of frequenting the Most Holy Sacrifice, of true confession of sins, of the danger of hell.
– No explicit assertion that the religions and idolatries prevailing in Madagascar are false, demonic, and must be abandoned for the one true faith.
– No insistence that civil authorities should recognize the rights of Christ the King and favor the Catholic Church, as taught by Pius XI and condemned as an “error” by liberalism (cf. Syllabus, prop. 55).
– No warning against the modernist thesis that dogma and structures “evolve” with cultures (clearly anathematized in Lamentabili and Pascendi).
Instead, there is the calm presupposition that multiplying diocesan frameworks suffices—as if structures were ends in themselves. But integral Catholic doctrine teaches that ecclesiastical circumscription has meaning only as an instrument for:
– Guarding and transmitting the unchanged deposit of faith.
– Offering the true Sacrifice and the true sacraments.
– Subjecting men and societies to Christ’s social Kingship.
When these ends are not only unsaid, but in the wider context en route to being betrayed—as they were at Vatican II through religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality—that silence becomes moral complicity. It is precisely this silence that St. Pius X warned against when he condemned those who, under pretext of “biblical” or “historical” pastoralism, undermine doctrine in practice.
Symptomatic Fruit of Conciliar Subversion: Colonial Forms, Modernist Spirit
This constitution is a symptom and instrument of a broader design.
1. Continuity of external forms:
– Latin text, classical style, invocations of apostolic authority.
– Reference to the 1917 Code.
– Use of an apparently orthodox ecclesiology: suffragans, metropolitans, chapters, seminaries.
This gives an illusion of continuity: hermeneutica apparentis traditionis.
2. Internal change of orientation:
– The soon‑to‑follow council convoked by the same usurper will teach religious liberty and ecumenism in rupture with Pius IX and Pius XI.
– The same lines of bishops, formed by and through such constitutions, will obediently implement the new liturgy that attacks the Catholic theology of sacrifice and propitiation.
– The mission fields, instead of being bastions of strong, integral Catholicism, will become laboratories of inculturation, syncretism, and interreligious “dialogue.”
So what does this text effectively do?
– It gives to Madagascar a hierarchy structurally tied to the conciliar sect.
– It enables the later replacement of the true Mass and sacraments with the neo‑rite fabrications.
– It entwines the faithful in obedience to men who will betray the social reign of Christ and embrace condemned liberalism.
In this sense, the act is part of what Pius IX described regarding secret societies: machinatio aiming to submit the Church to secular, liberal, and Masonic principles. The enemy understands that the most efficient way to destroy is not always frontal attack, but controlled succession: fabricate bishops, dioceses, and “canonical” penalties that appear Catholic yet will serve an apostate agenda.
The Role of Marcel Lefebvre: An Ominous Prefiguration
The document explicitly commissions Marcel Lefebvre to implement its provisions. This is not an accidental name, but a symbol.
– Lefebvre then appears as loyal delegate of the Roman authority, executing without public protest the mandates of John XXIII.
– Later, he will present himself as defender of Tradition while maintaining recognition of the conciliar usurpers and operating within their juridical framework as long as possible.
– His initial complicity in erecting the conciliar network and his later equivocations—“give us the old Mass, that is enough for us”—reveal the tragic consequence of refusing to draw the doctrinal conclusion taught by the pre‑1958 Magisterium regarding manifest heretics in high office.
Thus the constitution showcases the paradoxical figure: a missionary bishop who, instead of breaking with the rising neo‑church at the root, collaborates in its structuring, and later leads a schism within the already false conciliar body, creating confusion and offering a simulacrum of resistance without full doctrinal rupture with the usurpers.
This is instructive: those pretending to be traditional Catholics who accept the conciliar sect’s validity, or treat its “popes” as only partially erroneous, stand on the same unstable ground as an act like this constitution. They perpetuate the counterfeit.
Christ the King versus the Conciliar Administrative Machine
Measured by the immutable doctrine of Pius IX and Pius XI, what is the specific doctrinal bankruptcy revealed here?
1. Absence of the Kingship of Christ:
– Quas Primas states that social peace and order will not come until individuals and states recognize and obey the reign of Christ, and that the Church must publicly condemn laicism and religious indifferentism.
– This constitution speaks of growth, shelter, institutional order, but not of the duty of the Malagasy nation and its authorities to confess the Catholic faith, legislate in submission to divine law, and extirpate public idolatry.
– The Church’s missionary presence is framed as benign extension of structures, not as militant assertion of the one true religion over the island.
2. Tolerance of liberal presuppositions:
– The entire vocabulary coexists seamlessly with the liberal idea that the Church is simply one religious organization among others in a plural society, albeit expanding peacefully.
– There is no echo of the Syllabus’s condemnation of separation of Church and State (prop. 55), or of the idea that the Church is not a perfect and sovereign society.
3. Naturalization of supernatural authority:
– By focusing on territorial, economic, and bureaucratic data, with scarce explicit reference to supernatural ends, the text reads as if the episcopate were primarily an administrative governance, not a supernatural jurisdiction ordered to dogma and sacrifice.
– This habit of speaking fosters a mentality in which “diocese” is almost a corporate district; thus, when Vatican II later redefines mission and liturgy, the same structures adapt without resistance.
In short, while avoiding explicit heretical phrases, the act manifests a mentality and direction fundamentally at odds with the militant, dogmatically sharp, anti‑liberal, anti‑modernist spirit demanded by the pre‑1958 Magisterium.
Canonical Facade and Nullity in Face of Apostasy
One must address directly the question of validity and obligation.
If we apply the principles reaffirmed in the sources provided:
– A manifest heretic ceases ipso facto to hold office; he cannot be pope nor source of jurisdiction (Bellarmine; Wernz‑Vidal’s explanation; the theology reflected in canon 188.4).
– Jurisdiction and legislative authority in the Church are inseparable from the profession of the true faith; formal or public defection severs the bond.
– Papal laws contrary to divine constitution or built on usurped authority lack binding force; Pius IX himself declared null civil laws that usurp spiritual jurisdiction.
Therefore:
– If John XXIII did not profess integrally the faith defended by Pius IX and St. Pius X, but embraced an aggiornamento culminating in Vatican II’s errors, his legislative acts are, at best, juridically dubious, and, at worst, null.
– The constitution’s threats of penalties for those who disregard it are empty when directed from a doubtful or heretical lawgiver; those who resisted the conciliar machine out of fidelity to the prior Magisterium were not disobedient to the Church, but faithful to her.
Moreover, the constitution’s own structure reveals the problem: it assumes that whoever signs “John XXIII, Servant of the Servants of God” must be obeyed. But integral Catholic faith requires the prior condition: the signatory must be a Catholic, not a promoter of condemned novelties.
Conclusion: A Case Study in the Soft Mechanism of Usurpation
This constitution on Ambatondrazaka is not a spectacular doctrinal manifesto; it is more insidious. By carefully reproducing pre‑conciliar forms and canonical style, it:
– Embeds the authority of a usurper deeper into the fabric of mission territories.
– Produces new nodes of episcopal power that will later transmit the conciliar revolution.
– Replaces the militant, doctrinally explicit Catholic missionary spirit with an understated institutional expansionism devoid of clear denunciation of error and of the full proclamation of Christ’s Kingship.
It is precisely through such “normal” acts that the conciliar sect entrenched itself: dioceses, episcopal conferences, new hierarchies, all apparently orthodox in structure, but soon animated by a new religion.
Authentic fidelity to the Church demands that such acts be unmasked: not revered as expressions of the perennial Magisterium, but recognized as juridical instruments of an apostate system, lacking legitimacy to bind consciences, and serving to replace the visible structures of the true Church with the paramasonic edifice of the “Church of the New Advent.”
The only way out is a return—without compromise—to the integral doctrine of the pre‑1958 Magisterium, to the condemnation of liberalism and modernism, to the exclusive rights of Christ the King and His one true Church over souls and societies, and to the rejection of every pseudo‑canonical construct erected by usurpers occupying the Vatican.
Source:
De diego Suarez – Tananarivensis (Ambatondrazakaënsis) (vatican.va)
Date: 08.11.2025